The album sounds ruthlessly compressed especially through heavy passages of music i.e 'Hurts like heaven'.

Other songs like 'Us against the world' don't seem to suffer from this harsh compression.

I've tried 320kps mps and FLAC versions and tried a Full album streaming off youtube and still exhibit the same noise.

The only thing I haven't tried is iTunes or CD, I did read a few post back that it sounds fine in someone's car?!

I wonder if that was also mp3 or was it CD?! I do have a sneaking suspicion it might have something to do with the producer of the album and iTunes, this is from another post labelled "Mastered for iTunes":

In Apple's calculation, mastering a song or album "for iTunes" means that it'll sound better while remaining just as portable as the encoded files we're accustomed to packing by the thousands onto our phones and mobile devices. For Bob Ludwig, a mastering engineer who remastered Coldplay's latest album, Mylo Xyloto, for the new "Mastered for iTunes" store, this makes sense. "From a technical viewpoint, there are cases where the lossy 24-bit AAC file would be superior to the lossless CD," Ludwig wrote in an email. "I did an early demonstration for some engineer friends of mine and the difference between the 'Mastered for iTunes' file I created and the one that was ripped from a 16-bit CD was easily heard on the little speakers on my MacBook Pro."

I listened to the two versions of Coldplay's single, "Every Teardrop Is A Waterfall," to test the difference. (I can't post audio samples of the two versions of the track here because the encoding process a file goes through in any audio editor obscures those subtle differences, but if you have a CD version of any of the albums in the "Mastered for iTunes" section of the store, you can compare easily by ripping the tracks at "iTunes Plus" quality.) Played over decent headphones, I could hear subtle differences, especially where the mix was denser and more complicated. Ludwig's "Mastered for iTunes" version sounds slightly less crowded, with clearer distinctions between similar tones in acoustic guitar and piano and sharper, less distorted drums.

That's partly because Apple is providing mastering engineers with software that helps tweak individual songs that will be encoded as AACs, rather than relying on a standardized encoding process — as intelligently designed as it might be — to handle the compression correctly. It's a crucial step, because tracks mastered for AAC aren't technically of higher quality; they're just made to sound as good as possible within the restrictions of the format.

Now, if that is the case I wonder has anyone compared their copy of Mylo Xyloto to a iTune version?! If there is a subtle difference as stated in the article then this could explain what the rest of us are hearing!

I might try converting to AAC file and see if it makes any difference.

Just to end this, I've never been a 'Super Friend' fan of Coldplay when they hit the scene. But I did enjoy a few of their early songs like 'Yellow' and 'the Scientist'. I've only recently gotten back in to their last few albums i.e X & Y and now Mylo Xyloto, which I love very much! To me I loved X & Y especially for the style of music with so many great songs. Mylo Xyloto for me is beautiful, at first I didn't give it a second look but it grew on me in a big way. I started to listen to their latest album more and more, I even watched the live video which I only do on very few occasions.

What a great album with a great mix of songs that exudes fun, happiness, the love for music, perhaps?!

I agree that the recording quality is not great but I actually think this album is better than the last two they've released musically (even though it is heavily pop influenced). Still, the best imo is Parachutes.

The new Florence + The Machine album clips on a lot of tracks too and imo is not near as good as Lungs.

At the risk of digging up an old discussion;

I came here while A/Bing my AKG K550s against my HD598s. Source is original Parachutes CD -> FLAC. About 26 seconds into Don't Panic, I noticed the compression. Also, I found Chris Martin's voice quite sibilant; is that the mics, mixing, my choice in headphones? (I doubt it, given the Sennheisers.)

...And we're definitely clipping.

For comparison's sake I played Don't Panic from Spotify, and while they've set the master volume slightly lower, the clipping is still obvious.